r/AskALiberal

Many commenters claim that JFK would hate the modern day Democratic Party (especially DSA) because he was a capitalist that opposed communism. However, capitalism has dramatically changed since the 1960s.

In the 1960s, America followed a version with more guardrails, similar to Keynesian economics, which was started in the FDR era. However, Reagan cut taxes and moved America towards trickle down economics, where we are still waiting for the money to trickle down. Many people have a negative view of capitalism because they have only experienced post-Reagan capitalism, and didn’t experience Keynesian capitalism (which has guardrails), under which America was improving, with stronger unions and more chance to make it to the middle class.

I think many of us have a personal anecdote about knowing a conservative who has a progressive carve-out in their politics because they were at one point personally affected.  Maybe they are pro-LGBT because they have a gay family member.  Or are pro-universal healthcare because they or someone they know was ruined by the health care system. Or are pro-choice for a similar reason. Or become against Trump because tariffs hit their industry.

My question is can this phenomenon be taken as a sign of hope that conservatives can be convinced with the right arguments that progressive policies are desirable?

Or is this to be taken as a negative, indicating that there is a barrier of selfishness that is impervious to statistics and hypotheticals, and can only be penetrated by mostly rare occurrences of being personally affected?

Why not just:

- Single payer is far less complex

- Right now we pay more, and get less

- Even if wait times would be longer (not a given), simply finding a doctor would be way easier.

- We'd stop funding an industry that is built around bureaucracy and taking advantage of complexity to fleece our tax dollars.

You’re taxed before you get your money (payroll tax). You’re taxed when you spend your money (sales tax), you’re taxed to live on the land you purchased (property tax), and your money is taxed again (income tax).

As I saw someone say before:

They tax the soil, the seed, the tree, the fruit and the basket you carry your fruit in.

Don't get me wrong, Trump is doing awful things to this country, but would a future with things like universal healthcare and renewable energy-independence be worth it?

If the US never experienced someone like Trump, I wonder if we would have seen the rise in popularity of democratic socialism like we are now. Not saying it's mainstream yet, but maybe it took someone like Trump to come in and wreck things so badly it might actually accelerate the transition to a society that actually works for the people?

There are people like me who were actively voting against Trump to protect the status quo, but I'm at the point where I want to put forward candidates who run on policies that will move our country forward. I think those policies would be way more popular than anything the establishment is putting out there currently and they know it. Certainly, they would be popular enough to win elections in many places.

Jordan values diplomatic stability rather than regional dominance. They absorb refugees from neighboring countries out of morality despite the fact it strains their recourses. They actually live under religious harmony with Christians and Muslims.

While yes, they’re a Semi-Constitutional monarchy and have mixed human rights records. But compared to everywhere else in the Middle East, they’re saint. We can also use whatever influence we have left to get Jordan to improve that record.

To those who disagree, I like to remind you that we are considered allies with non democracies like Turkey, Vietnam, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, UAS, Bahrain, and Qatar.

Edit: I know Jordan is already an ally, but they need to be our most important in the region.

With the news yesterday that the NYC DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo is from a very affluent family it opens up the conversation again around DSA members not being the demographic that they claim to champion for. Why are so many DSA politicians and members not “working class” (whatever that even means) with almost a third making over $100,000 per year, and why do “working class” voters (based on the last midterm primaries) tend to not vote for them, even though they spout a working class message?

I’m curious to hear from liberal parents whose children grew up to identify as conservative or Republican. How has that affected your relationship as they’ve gotten older?

Of the three modern Democratic presidents (and frankly I think it's generous to even factor in the 90s given how radically different the landscape has become) one was a center-right blue dog, one ran as a progressive despite governing as a centrist (and was seen as extra radical because he wasnt a straight white man), and one ran as a centrist before governing firmly from the left.

The only thing Clinton, Obama, and Biden's victories all share? They came off the backs of extremely unpopular Republican admins.

Even just looking at Clinton and Biden (the straight white men who ran away from the left on the campaign trail) they most likely wouldnt have won without Perot and Covid, respectively.

To me, it sure doesn't look like "Moderates win elections" so much as "Moderates win elections after Republicans fail to govern and outside circumstances are involved"

I'm not trying to make an argument for progressives here. Obama is unique for lot of reasons and, of course, he wasnt even actually on the left.

But is there something I'm missing? Or is it all just wishcasting and bias?

We have cabinet members cozying up to an extreme pastor. We have courts allowing businesses to refuse cakes for gay weddings, we have religious exemptions for vaccines(which as far as I can tell applicants don’t have to cite scripture and context to receive), and more.
Should anyone running for office be required to sever ties to their church, mosque, or synagogue or memberships to religious groups and organizations?

Ask a liberal what’s your opinion on them

It's almost a given that equality is a fundamental. A goal that we should strive for. But exactly why? When I pick a mate, I want him to be tall and handsome and strong. Among the pool of men I can date, I discriminate. I have a preference for certain characteristics. Maybe you discriminate base on sense of humor. But in no way do we treat our potential mates as all equal. In fact, for most things in our lives, we differently are biased. So where does this notion that equality is desirable stem from? Are all men really created equal? I certainly don't think so.

This Tuesday weekly thread is for general chat, whether you want to talk politics or not, anything goes. Also feel free to ask the mods questions below. As usual, please follow the rules.

Hi. So I was browsing this subreddit (don't ask why), when I came across this topic, and more specifically, this comment thread. It's the perfect example of what I hope to make more peaceful and not necessarily agreeable but willing to talk, from the thread title. Too often, I see debates like these derail because people just wouldn't cooperate and just do what was asked, or at least play along, because at least in my view, if they did, things would turn out SO much better. For example, one person asked something, another person asked something, the first person provided with something, and then that something gets dismissed or ignored, and so on and so forth. Throughout the thread, I was looking at one guy in particular and thought "couldn't he just at least 'entertain' (from his point of view) their debate points so things go so much easier?", so it doesn't result in a comment thread that frankly made me pound my desk and want to do some bad stuff to myself in front of them to get them to cut it out.

And it's not just this subreddit. I see it ALL the time, no matter the political orientation, but I guess to focus on liberals, since this *is* the appropriate subreddit for it, anytime I see stuff even remotely like this, I feel pushed away, as a potential ally, yes, but even as a supposed neutral bystander, I'm way more likely to disengage, or at least want to disengage, due to all the infighting and fighting and bad vibes coming off of them.

So that's my query. Thanks in advance.

I’m guessing that while some people may be “true believers”, the majority of the higher ups know it’s all bullshit and don’t really have much of an ideology beyond Chinese nationalism, the desire to make China rise to the status of a great power.

China as it is today has kept the one party dictatorship from the Mao period, but has abandoned the Soviet style socialist command economic model for a type of state capitalism. But Mao remains useful for propaganda, as the current regime draws its “legitimacy” from the mythos of Mao ending the “Century of Humiliation”, so they can’t outright say they have rejected Marxist Leninism as that would undermine their own authority.

I know liberals have been pretty strong about defending voting by mail, and conservatives now view it as inherently corruptive, but stepping back from that debate, I think a larger issue for me is how do we prevent coercion inside the home.

If a women is afraid of her husband, isn't it incredibly likely he'll just fill in her voting card and make her sign it?

I'm not saying I'm against mail-in ballots, but we have to acknowledge that progressives fought hard for anonymous voting specifically because it allowed people to be free from coercion. Women in particular were often subject to the coercion of their husbands in the era before anonymous voting, and mail-in voting is most definitely not anonymous.

I doubt this accusation because I don't exactly see how it gives men more power over women. For one thing, no pro-lifer has proposed a loophole where the abortion can happen if the husband or father of the woman gives his permission. That would be putting control in the hands of men. And often the man in the woman's life wants the abortion too. If you come from a highly conservative family and your daughter gets pregnant out of wedlock, you might want her to abort in order to save face. If your wife gets pregnant at an inconvenient point in your career, you might want her to abort. Pro-lifers do not care, they seem pretty earnest when they claim abortion is baby murder. Nobody has figured out at what point a fetus becomes a human, so it seems to me that pro-lifers want to play it safe whereas feminists want to take the benefit of the doubt.